


And Stars, in their Multitude

by KayleeFrye



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Deb Lives, Fix-It, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayleeFrye/pseuds/KayleeFrye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Debra Morgan, and the art of moving on. </p><p>
  <i>As a star, she looks down at her brother with something akin to pity, twinkles at him through the small barred slit in his holding cell at the station where he paces irritably. In that moment, she can forgive him, forgive Harry, forgive herself for all the atrocities the trio have committed, and knows that her actions tonight were mercy.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Stars, in their Multitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BiP](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BiP/gifts).



> Because she deserved better than what the narrative gave her. Happy holidays, BiP!

She stares at the cuffs around her brother's wrists and thinks it was always going to end like this, one way or another: her brother in chains, or dead on a slab in the flickering, fluorescent lights of the morgue.

Harry had to have known this was inevitable. She wonders if Harry ever considered what would become of his daughter when it all came to a head. As he taught Dexter the code, did he ever think how it might destroy her one day? She doubts he spared her a second glance. Harry only ever had eyes for his avenging angel.

Speltzer was one thing. It was easy to let Dexter convince her he was doing right. In the heat of failing to protect Melanie, she was grateful the bastard wouldn't be able to hurt anyone else. But LaGuerta. True, she's often been at odds with Laguerta. Where Deb is led wholly by her heart, by justice and passion, LaGuerta is ambitious, practical and political. But there's a line of permanent marker across the steel floor of the cargo container, between her Captain and her brother. No amount of Dexter's manipulative scrubbing of her moral boundaries can sufficiently stretch the line to reposition LaGuerta to the side where Deb would allow the Captain's murder. Time and again since the church, Deb's pitted love against duty and honour and made the selfish choice. Here, the line is frayed and frail, but an uncrossable fortress all the same. She plants herself firmly along the battlements, makes her stand for how far she's willing to fall for familial affection.

It’s better this way. Better her own hands wrapping the cold metal around her brother's wrists than a stranger's or a friend's, better than a stab to the abdomen or heart that takes him from her.

She leaves them, then, without a second glance: Maria unsteady on her feet, but already calling for backup; Dexter cuffed to the table; a dead body and puddles of congealing blood between them.

Miami pulses with the beat of celebration, of anticipation, of electric excitement that spills onto front patios and streets. A New Year. There are no more tears to shed, she’s spent them over years of loss. She grips the steering wheel hard with fury.

It’s hard to say who Deb is most angry with: 

LaGuerta ( _for what? For defending the honour of a man she loved, for proving his innocence, clearing his name? All things considered, Deb would have done the same for Dexter, if her brother hadn't turned out to be the fucking monster they'd been hunting all along)._

Her father ( _the traitor who trained her brother in the finely skilled art of being a monster_ ).

Dexter _(fucking lying piece of shit, the fucking Bay Harbour Butcher who still manages to hold her heart in his fucking hands_ ).

Debra Morgan ( _fucking bitch/liar/hypocrite/arsonist/Judas_ ).

***

Bottle of vodka clutched in her hand, she curls into herself on the couch, and turns herself into a star: not for the adoration of a thousand upturned eyes, but for the safety of the thing. As a star, she is a mass of light, she holds the world in her palm, she feels the pulse of the earth, life and death beneath her feet, in her marrow, in her chest. As a star, she is untouchable, save by Time herself. Her sister stars keep her safe in their light from Fate, her old Master, who’s had his way with her since she was a babe. And as a star, she looks down at her brother with something akin to pity, twinkles at him through the small barred slit in his holding cell at the station where he paces irritably. In that moment, she can forgive him, forgive Harry, forgive herself for all the atrocities the trio have committed, and knows that her actions tonight were mercy.

She expects sirens blaring, guns blazing, shouting and pounding at her door, lights flashing. Instead, there’s only a single swift, firm knock on the door (earlier than she expects, what with it being New Years Eve and their needing a warrant), and the streetlamps lurking in through her open curtains.

No point in delaying, she collects herself from the couch, brings herself slowly, carefully, back down to Earth, and opens the door.

There are no unis, no patrol cars, no swat teams. Just LaGuerta on her front porch, poised and dainty, hands crossed neatly in front and baring a sleek silver suitcase, like she hadn’t been kidnapped and almost killed by Miami’s most prolific serial killer hours earlier.

“Oh,” says Deb. “Come to do the arrest yourself so you can fucking gloat, have you?”

LaGuerta purses her lips. “No, actually. I’m here with a peace offering, Lieutenant. Completely off the record.” She hesitates, adds, “As a friend, if you’d like.”

“Fuck you,” Deb says, holds her hands, palm up, toward the Captain. “Just fucking get it over with.”

LaGuerta glances down at Deb’s proffered wrists, shakes her head, “Debra—“ she starts, but Deb cuts her off with a scoff and swings the door wide. She turns her back on LaGuerta, plops back down the couch.

“Whatever. Arrest me whenever the fuck you’re ready, then.”

LaGuerta moves into the apartment, unlatches one hand from the briefcase to close the door gently. She straightens the folds in her pastel flowered skirt as she sits beside Deb, puts the briefcase on the floor by her feet, tucks her hair behind her ear, clears her throat. “How long have you known?”

“I’d like to speak to a lawyer if you’re going to fucking drill me but not do your fucking job and fucking arrest me,” Deb says scornfully.

LaGuerta’s hands twist together in her lap, a nervous twitch uncharacteristic of the fiery woman.

“Lieutenant,” she tries again. “Debra. I can arrest you, if that’s what you really want, but hear me out first. The Bay Harbour Butcher racked up quite a death toll, and that’s just the first time the case was open. I’m betting it’s grown a lot since then. When the media gets wind of this, they’re going to spin it that the Bay Harbour Butcher’s Lieutenant sister was helping him all along, feeding him Intel, covering up—especially given that she was on the F.B.I’s Bay Harbour Butcher task force. But I think she may be his biggest victim, and I want a chance to listen before I go back to the station, because the rest of the world won’t listen, Debra, believe me.”

Deb says nothing, no quick-witted retort, no sharp tongue, no foul language. Her silence hangs thick in the air, says more about her thoughts and opinion of LaGuerta than words ever could.

LaGuerta sighs, reaches down, opens the suitcase, rifles in its contents for a moment, pulls up with a CD case. “This is the DVD from the gas station,” she says. “The only copy, I swear. I need to know that I’m right about you, Debra. You’re a good person. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but it’s yours, to do with what you will, if you tell me truth.”

There’s an earnestness in LaGuerta’s speech. Deb glances down at the case. 

“I didn’t know,” she says, after a moment. “Not until that night. At the church. He wasn’t expecting me to be there, but I just… wanted to make sure things were going smoothly. Instead—“

“You found he’d killed Travis Marshall.”

Worse, she saw him do it, saw him fucking relish in it, but that’s close enough. Deb swallows and nods. “Yeah. But even then... Fuck. I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t want to fucking believe the truth, it was easier to let him take the wheel like he always does and convince me it was fucking self-defence. By the time I found out what he was, it was too fucking late.”

“How did you find the full truth?”

Deb squeezes her eyes shut, images of plastic and blood too fresh in her mind. “Oh, fuck. I can’t. Maria, I can’t. Fuck.”

Something cold and square lands in her palm. She opens her eyes to find the DVD there.

“Make sure your story is solid for the F.B.I.,” LaGuerta says. “We’ll all be facing fallout for this, but they’ll grill you the hardest of all, because you’re closest to him. I think it’s best if we say you followed me to the docks out of concern that I was having a mental breakdown. I'm heading back to the station now. I'll make sure Dexter knows that's how we are handling this, to avoid implicating you.”

“Why?”

“Because I understand,” LaGuerta says simply. “And because someone needs to look after Harrison.”

***

LaGuerta is right on one account: things spiral quickly. The F.B.I is hounding and relentless, entirely convinced she had to have known all along. “A bright, attractive young detective like yourself,” says the dimpled grey suit leading her interrogation. “Using your position to get intimate with the F.B.I agent heading the task force, in order to help your brother frame Sergeant James Doakes.”

“Fuck you,” she spits. “Don't you _fucking dare_ bring Frank into this. You were the cocksucking bastards who got him killed. You don't know the first fucking thing about what he meant to me.”

Mostly, she doesn't lie, doesn't have to because she remained unawares for the majority of the period they accuse of her assisting Dexter. The discovery is still close and real and raw, fueling her poignant response to questioning. But her stomach twists with guilt. She aided and abetted, she was an accomplice to at least two murders; she knows she deserves to be arrested.

“It'll look worse for us if they find out,” Maria says over coffee, and it's odd that they're on first name basis now, but there's no one else she can turn to. “I need you to stick with the story, Debra. It doesn't justify what Dexter's done, but Marshall deserved what he got. I don't blame you for responding how you did. You don't deserve to go down with your brother. You're a good person.”

Ultimately, they have nothing on her, and there's nothing for it but to let her go. Most of homicide's personnel are fired. Only LaGuerta, as the one to finally catch the Bay Harbour Butcher, and Quinn, who wasn't part of the initial investigation, remain. Angel, having already submitted his resignation, is permitted to see out the month. 

Reporters swarm her apartment and the station, cameras and crowds flash, like so many locusts in the still warm January Miami weather. She shields her face with her hair as best she can, keeps the curtains drawn, sleeps 'til early evening, downs vodka and gin and then heaves it all up, her stomach raw and aching.

But Maria is wrong: she cannot look after Harrison. Her sins sit squarely on her shoulders as the boy's father rots in jail awaiting trial. Sometimes, the way he looks at her, brown eyes soft and open and staring (so like and yet unlike Dexter's), she's certain he can see them peeking out at him, sure he can read her betrayal plainly on her face. He cries for Dexter, demands to know where his father is. A pit forms in her stomach, her throat clenches. The boy grows frenetic. She remains frozen and speechless. He cries himself to sleep.

She sends him to stay with Astor and Cody’s grandparents—Jamie offers to take him at first, but they decide, in the end, that it’s best to get him out of Miami entirely. Let him live a life free of the Morgan curse, let him grow up a Bennett, without the weight of his father's name, without the shame and guilt and the blood of hundreds of victims and their families on his innocent infant hands.

Some days her head is on fire. She destroys all the family photos, save those of Doris Morgan. She smashes framed photographs with clenched fists, throws them to the floor, raging with a constant stream of expletives. The mirrors go next, until her apartment is littered with pieces of glass glittering like diamonds in the orange sunset peeking through the curtains. It’ll take weeks to clean it all up, and she’ll be stepping on it for days, creating fresh wounds on her bare feet, but she doesn’t give a flying monkey shit.

She collects whatever wood she can find, builds a bonfire on the beach. One by one, she tosses the pieces of photos into the flames, watches as they’re engulfed and turn to ash. She saves the photograph of the trip to Myrtle Beach for last.

Some days she’s ok. Angel is busy organizing the opening of his restaurant, but he stays with her as often as he can, and that helps. He sweeps away the glass fragments. When he finds her shivering in a bath of ice, he doesn't scold. He scoops her up, wraps her in fluffy towels and blankets he finds in the hall closet, makes her tea, and puts her to bed. When reporters press too close, he flashes his badge; it disperses the crowd with its glare of bright, angry gold. When she's ill, he holds her hand or her hair as she bends over a toilet to expel all the bile in her stomach.

“Dexter is asking for you,” he says, arm around her shoulders, sitting beside her on the cool, peeling cerulean tiled bathroom floor, their backs against the yellowed tub.

She kicks out at the toilet, howls in pain when her bare foot connects with the hard surface. “ _Fuck_ if I give a flying fuck about that cockshit fucking bastard!” It's easier, it's necessary even, to try and hate him, to direct all her self-loathing and rage at her brother. There's no other way to go on. Of course she still cares.

Angel laughs and strokes her wet hair back from her pale, sweat-stained cheeks, like she used to do for her mother when she first got sick, like Deb always used to wish Harry or Dexter would do for her when she was ill. ”How about I tell him you miss him, but you can't come right now?”

Deb nods and sobs into the palm tree on the sleeve of his shirt; he smells like sand and pomegranate. He's soft and round, where Harry and Dexter had been strong, hard, and lean. She sinks into the open softness of his skin. 

***

“I think I've figured it out,” she says when, after a dozen thrills of her phone, she finally answers his call. This will have to do; if she faces him across the visitation table, sees his shaved head and orange jumpsuit, all the walls she's working to build will crumble. “You fucking knew I wasn't gonna pull the trigger. You knew I love you too fucking much.”

“I was open to the possibility that you would.”

She laughs acrid acid at him through the wireless airwaves that connect their voices. “Sure you were. Maybe you even wanted me to, and it probably wouldn't have made a fucking difference to you if it was you or her. As long as it was a fucking end, as long you didn't have to take an ounce of fucking responsibility for all your shit. But that doesn't fucking matter, does it? You knew I wouldn't. The whole fucking vulnerable 'do what you gotta do' bullshit was just another part your game; preemptive forgiveness for something you knew I'd never fucking do. The fuck did you think was gonna happen? Did you think you'd fucking groomed me enough that I'd fucking let you get away with killing LaGuerta? Maybe even fucking do it for you and save you the trouble?”

“No. You would never.”

“Too fucking right I would never. But you hoped I'd fucking let you get on with it, figured that with all my love, there's no way I'd kill you or arrest you, even as you feigned fucking half-sincere willingness.”

Dexter sighs. “Does it matter, Deb? I forgive you.”

“I don't need your fucking forgiveness. Your love is fucking tainted, and that's where you were wrong. It's because I fucking love you and dad that I had to do it. That was a line none of us can cross.”

The last time she sees him is on the witness stand. His fingers are steepled neatly together, wrists resting gently against the edge of the dark wooden defence table, still and silent and in control as ever. He stares at her unblinking, his lips a thin straight line, as she's questioned and cross-examined. She avoids his eyes, keeps her gaze on the golden globe above the large curved double-doors at the opposite end of the courtroom, answers questions as stoically as she's able, fighting back tears.

She leaves Miami as soon as can after the trial. No family, no job, she might as well complete the triage: no home. If she's to live without all that has defined her, a fresh start, a clean break, is the only option. Without Dexter, without Harrison and work, the house is too quiet and the ocean too loud.

Temporally and geographically, Anchorage is everything Miami is not: cold, dry air, and treacherous volcanic steps in opposition to Florida's sweltering damp heat, flat plains and everglades.

The Summer days are warmer than she expects, only perhaps slightly cooler than Miami winter. It rains more than expected, too. Winter brings snow and cold like she's never known, an ice prison her self-imposed punishment for her crimes. It bites her skin with sharp teeth. She foregoes gloves; her hands numb and ache and throb. Her skin dries out, stretches hollow across her cheeks and the back of her hands, grows aged and wrinkled. She stares in fascination as her skin splits, cracks like pavement, beads of blood pooling and drying on the surface her extremities.

The stars smile brighter. Long winter nights and long summer days stretch across the mountains that form the fortress shielding her on all sides from her past, whisper gently of a life she might have known with Frank if things had been different. 

She gets a job as a security guard at the local mall. It's the closest thing to being a cop, really, and a cop's life is the only life she's ever known. Blood and bone, she's a cop all the way through, but no station will take her. Despite the glowing letters of recommendation from Batista, Mathews, and LaGuerta, most stations deign even a call. And when she gets an interview, she suspects it's pity, recognition for services rendered. The Morgan name haunts her. In the halls waiting for an interview, a group of Unis glance at her furtively, whispering in a huddle.

“The Bay Harbour Butcher's sister,” she hears.

She bites her tongue, purses her lips, closes her eyes, and squares her shoulders. When she walks into the interview, she holds only her middle finger, raised in salute, higher than her head.

The manager of security at the mall is initially hesitant. He looks at her skeptically over his broad-rimmed glasses. “You’re… highly overqualified, Lieutenant,” he says.

“Former,” she corrects.

“Former. Why did you quit the force? Why do you want to work here? Security is for cop wannabes not up to mustard, not a seasoned veteran like yourself.”

“I’ve seen too much of the depravity of humanity,” she says simply. If he doesn’t know, if he hasn’t heard about the Bay Harbour Butcher’s arrest, if he hasn’t made the connection to her, far be it from her to inform him. The freedom of anonymity will be a welcome relief. “It was too much. I need a fucking break.”

She doesn’t get a gun, but she gets a badge and uniform, and she gets to spend her days upholding the law, keeping out riffraff, apprehending shoplifters. It’s a mountainous step below hunting down Miami’s most prolific serial killers, but it’s something. It pays the bills. The uniform fits her perfectly. The weight of the badge on her belt is familiar and warm.

 ***

“Are you happy?”

Early Fall and they’re sitting in a little café at the edge of downtown, sweaters and scarves pressed close to their bodies. The chill wind bites at her cheeks and her hands, cupped around a mug of espresso, whenever the door chimes open.

He comes, like clockwork, every three months, stays as long as he can, gets her out of her apartment, tidies her messes, puts some of her falling pieces back in place. It’s been a year since Deb deigned going to her brother’s execution and funeral. She hadn’t been able to stomach the idea of looking Dexter in the eyes through the glass as they pushed the Death needles into his skin, nor the thought of her colleagues’ eyes on her. Brother or friend, all eyes, she knew, would brim with betrayal.

Deb laughs: short, bitter, hard. “That ship sailed a long ass time ago, Angel. Do you know what’s happened every time I’ve ever felt one fucking ounce of happiness? Everything turns to shit. I’ve got the hint now. Pretty fucking sure Jesus would rise from his fucking grave to shoot me in the fucking face himself if happiness ever came my way again. Jesus, how the fuck could I ever be happy, Angel?”

He looks at her across the table, eyes furrowed in concern. “You’re right. I only meant… Well, we all miss you, Deb.”

Deb smiles lugubriously. “I miss you, too. But, hey, tell me how the fuck the restaurant's going. I never imagined you running a fucking restaurant.”

***

Her apartment is a small, shabby one bedroom in a four plex converted from an old two-story library, a five minute walk from Cook Inlet; she can see the water from her bedroom window. The pipes rattle. The emerald paint is faded and peeling. There's a an old, crumbling brick fireplace in the living-room that keeps the place warm. A silver chandelier like the one she remembers from her grandma's house hangs from the ceiling. The appliances are old, the wiring unreliable, but it's cozy and it's hers. With a proud smile, she comes to think of it as home.

Bill and Maura bring down the kids every summer. They look haggard. She can't imagine raising three kids at all, let alone at their age.

“I'm sorry,” she says. “Do you want me to take Harrison?”

“It's all right,” Maura tells her. “We understand. We know what it is to have a black sheep in the family. Cody and Astor love having him around. These three have had enough upset in their lives; let them stay together. They're doing so well. And Astor is a big help. She's become like a second mother to her brothers.”

Deb watches her niece make sandwiches for Cody and Harrison, and agrees. They're growing up so fast. They look happy and healthy. 

 ***

Cancer stealing her mother. Harry. Brian. Frank. Christine's suicide. Dexter, Dexter, Dexter. She splashes her traumas across her bedroom wall in red ink. Under silver moonlight, she climbs the alpine landscape and submits their names for judgement by the stars.

“Recovery is an ongoing affair,” her therapist reminds her kindly—and thank fuck this one seems a bit more conventional. In fact, the woman is positively appalled when Deb tells her the conclusion reached by her previous therapist. “There are no happy endings, but there are happy moments, there's possibility for a life worth living after trauma, for moving on and learning to live anew.”

“He's always been my safety net,” Deb says. “I don't know how the fuck to get through, without him to fall back on. I'm afraid of what will happen if I can't to forgive him and my dad. I'm afraid I won't be able to forgive myself. I don't fucking think I can.”

“You'll learn.” Her therapist smiles gently.

Deb takes up sculpting. She builds up her past in clay and tears it down, explores the contours of her life, smooths out the grooves. She sculpts all the faces of Dexter: brother, colleague, father, killer. Through deceptively monotonous, detailed grey statues, she uncovers the reality of his life and hers. The power to wield the grit under her fingers, warm and spinning, grants her tangible, full-throttled control of her life. Slowly, she puts the pieces together, sets them aside, and begins life anew.

“Have you thought about selling them?” Maria says over the phone at Christmas, always pragmatic. No longer colleagues, the differences that separated them aren't quite so acute. Through their shared secrets and experiences in love and loss, they find common ground upon which they build a tenuous, long-distance friendship.

“No,” Deb says. “They're mine.”

***

The art of survival in a life as fucktastic as Debra Morgan's is a dance at the bar where she spends her weekend evenings. Music, too loud, pounding her chest, a throng of bodies pressed too close together, her hands waving wild and unfettered above her bobbing head.

It's constant movement, never staying too still or too quiet long enough for the scalpel to reach her cheek. It's leaving behind everything with the power to cut her insides in two. It's a song and a painting, and a splash of clay across her face. It's a stream of expletives that fuel her last ounce of steam until she reaches the next rest station.

It's starting life from scratch, re-learning how to walk on rocky ground and unsteady feet. It's a complete re-education, tearing down years of inadequacy to discover that the stars shine for her, too, that much as she will always love and miss Harry and Dexter, she no longer owes them anything. She can live for herself. It's taking years of sorrow and mistakes and forgiving those who have wronged her, forgiving herself, but never forgetting.

Maybe she’s not happy yet, but she’s alive and relearning the world, and that’s something. That’s enough. It has to be. And maybe one day, she'll get there. She thinks she's well on her way.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Scarce To Be Counted (the Stars In Their Multitude remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505397) by [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic)




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